According to the World Health Organization, dementia is one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people. Dementia, which is a syndrome in which there is a deterioration in memory, behavior, and thinking, causes many who suffer from it to lose the ability to perform their regular activities. Elders are stricken with dementia far more than any other age group. In many cases, dementia is the reason an elder moves into a nursing home. Dementia is also often to blame for what is known as "elopement" or in layman's terms, wandering. Elders with dementia may develop wandering tendencies, wherein due to cognitive impairment, they begin to wander around their nursing home unsupervised and without an escort. Wandering may lead to serious injury as the result of falling. In some cases, wandering has even led to death, in cases where residents have wandered outside of their residential facility. Though rare, wandering is dangerous enough that lawmakers included provisions to protect against it in the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act. The law required that nursing homes must provide residents with adequate supervision to prevent elderly patients from wandering. That means, of course, that nursing homes must be properly staffed. To determine whether the nursing home an elder currently resides in or a nursing home that an elder may be considering residing in, provides adequate staffing, meet with administrators to ask the following questions:
- How many of the staff members are awake during the night?
- Does the staff employ people who specialize in working with elders with dementia?
- What is the ratio of staff members to residents?
- Are staff members assigned to specific residents, or do all staff members work with all residents?
- What kind of ongoing education and training in dementia does the staff receive?
- How does the staff handle residents who wander?
- Who supervises the staff responsible for caring for elders with dementia? What are their qualifications?